


from hence away

by Quillori



Series: Jeanie the Witch [1]
Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 08:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: What if Jeanie came back, rescuing herself?





	from hence away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/gifts).



The forest was friendly, familiar, with well travelled paths and nothing to fear. It was a generous forest, kind to man, giving nuts in season, and shade in the summer heat, wood for winter fires. Only at sunset did it take on another aspect, something foreign and dangerous and wild, something that cared nothing for ordered village life, for the civilisation of town. The light began to fail, the shadows to lengthen and play tricks, the air to lose the warmth of day before it had quite gained the dew-heavy stillness and peace of night. The creatures of the day were ... still there, but in retreat, hiding away; the sentinels of night, the great owls on silent wings, the flitting bats, were tardy, slow to wake. The colours changed moment by moment, sunset glinting fire on the stream, on the leaves, and the creeping shadows swallowing the undergrowth ... half the tree trunks ... the path itself. Later, when the moon rises, all will be as it was before, a forest by night, safe and well-known, no more mysterious than a forest by day. But now, at this moment...

It was an effort to reach the forest: somehow her days seemed all the same, one long heavy dragging weight, endless and joyless, the things she used to delight in grown dull and hollow. But surely, if there were any colour left in the world, it would be here, at sunset, the moment of change, when the world hung poised and everything seemed possible.

She’d meant to leave at noon, because she knew how long it took her now to do anything. And she’d been right to leave so much time, for noon was past before she dragged herself from her bed, the sun low in the sky by the time she was dressed and through the door. The way seemed endless, though in the past she’d run it lightly, taking only minutes. Surely the sun would be long set? Better to give up now and turn home. Or give up now and sit by the path, uncaring. But Jeanie had loved the sunset, once, and she kept going.

The last of the daylight was dull, a washed out colour steadily dimming to grey, to black. The stream, which had once danced merrily, was now a constant splash, mildly irritating, and tending to drown out the evening birdsong, if indeed any birds were singing. Even the sunset was a disappointment, a dirty smear of colour more suited to faded autumn leaves halfway to leafmould. Still, she had made it in time, and whatever force of will had brought her here propelled her onwards, into the barren woods. Here were paths she had known since childhood, deserted now and abandoned; here were the old hazel trees, their branches bare. Jeanie turned this way and that, choosing paths at random, with no clear idea where she was going. But if she stopped, she’d have to accept there had been no point in coming, no magic left in the world, so she kept going, as the sun sank away behind her and the darkness grew. 

Grey and off-white and almost-black, grey and off-white and almost-black, the same colours again and again, and the sunset almost gone. Perhaps it was gone already? She dare not turn and look. But no, there was a dull gleam reflected on the side of an ash tree where it was bare of lichen, and above it a few withered leaves that seemed to glow faintly with reflected light. She turned eagerly towards them, stepping off the path, pushing aside the brambles, hunting for the last of the light, and still afraid to turn and see it already gone. 

But there were no more hints, not one more trace of sunset colour, and at last she came to a halt, lost and cold, hardly able to see her way, and unable even to pretend the dying sun still lit the sky. She turned round then, and kept turning, searching for a familiar way in this, a forest she’d known since childhood, with not a nook, not a fallen trunk, not a little cairn of stones she did not know. But not this place.

There was no moon, and the trees overhead blocked out the stars. Only a faint glow, as pale and uncertain as a firefly or a willow-the-wisp, let her make out the shapes around her. 

They were quite ordinary shapes: a tree, a stone, a patch of earth. Only, out the corner of her eye, a hand reached out to her, a claw. A branch, of course. Only a branch, when she was looking at it full on. And that root, it was a root, nothing more, except it writhed, serpent like, digging itself up out of the ground, tongue tasting the air, blind eyes fixed on her. Until she looked at it, and there was nothing interesting to see. Was there a face in the broken bark of that tree trunk? A crouched goblin shape, furry and hunched ... but no, it was only a bush. Was that a rat, rustling among the fallen leaves? She would have welcomed something else inarguably alive, but no, it was only the breeze, or at least, it was nothing living she could see, although the night was still as a tomb. 

Poor Jeanie! She no longer wanted to sit down and give up - it may be fear was the first thing she’d truly felt for many long months, but it crept upon her now, unnumbed, unmediated by despair. She wanted to run, but which way could she run that didn’t lead to greater danger? She wanted to hide, but she dare not move, certainly dared not enter some darker patch of shadows, for who knew what hid there already? She wanted to cry, to sob, but some instinct told her to be silent, not to attract anything not already aware of her presence.

She never knew, afterwards, how long she stood frozen, fear catching the breath from her throat, binding her chest in iron bands, putting spurs to her racing heart. Swallowing up her reason. Anything, anything at all, was better than this. Better to run, to hide, to throw herself towards disaster, than endure a moment longer in terror. Better to know, and die, than remain paralysed with fear. 

But there was something indomitable in Jeanie, some spark of will or reason that had driven her onwards through hopelessness, through endless dreary days, and now would lead her home. She _would not_ give in, not now, not when she had come so far. There would be no giving up, no hiding, no running. Head high and resolute, Jeanie walked forward (why not forward? It was unlikely backwards was better, and she’d had her fill of turning aside). Step by step, while faces leered and gibbered around her, just out of sight. Animal faces, grotesque and hungry. Human faces, distorted with hatred, with envy, with cruelty. Bitter, reproachful faces, of what could have been and wasn’t, of what it would have been better not to have been. 

The night was cold, colder than she would have thought possible, a cold that ate away at her, stealing the feeling from her fingers, her feet, her arms, but never quite all the feeling, never enough not to feel the cold itself, sharp and biting as a well-honed knife blade. The darkness too grew ever deeper, but never quite so deep she could not see her way, just, by the dead and ghostly light filtering through clustering trees. 

At first the trees stood straight, like sentinels, but gradually they began to twist, curling in towards her, reaching out misshapen branches, clutching at her skirt with thorns and bony twigs. And always, just out of sight, there was movement, rustling, the sounds, or not so much sounds as the memory of sounds, a fading echo of the daytime woods that never quite died. 

The trees grew closer and closer, but never quite blocked her way. It seemed to Jeanie almost as though she herself were growing thinner, more insubstantial, so that however narrow the way, she could still pass through it. How long did she walk? A lifetime? A day? An hour? It seemed a lifetime, but she never tired, never needed to rest. At some point, after a few minutes or an eternity of walking, it came to her that though she could hear branches stirring, moving, just out of sight, and things out in the darkness not quite breathing, and even her bare feet on the path (had she been wearing shoes before? She could no longer remember. And when had there been a proper path beneath her feat? A stone pathway, cold and hard) ... although she could hear all these things, she could no longer hear the beating of heart, that had been hammering desperately in her breast. 

Closer and closer grew the trees, twisting and knotting together, until even a mouse would have been hard put to it to find a way, and yet somehow she walked on. Were those thorns tearing at her, or was that the cold? The pain was too distant to tell. 

She remembered, or she thought she remembered, words here and there: her grandmother had told her something, an old woman who died when she was a child had surely mentioned, there was a scrap of an old song, a lullaby .... the memories, if memories they were, were broken, uncertain, but she was almost sure there was something about a road, about the darkness and the thorns and the cold, about a choice and a price and a bridge to be crossed. 

And there it was, quite suddenly, The stony way beneath her feet was a set of stairs, the maze of branches the struts of some great bridge, towering up into the starless sky, each tread narrow as a bone, and great gaps with nothing below but endless void. 

The treads were bone, she was sure of it, although she kept her eyes fixed upwards, counting the steps as she climbed, an old counting-out song, almost meaningless, but it kept her going, kept her climbing step on step, bone on bone.

And at the end of it there was a gate, narrow and wooden and roofed over like little house, with a simple latch, easy to open. And the branches overhead, blotting out the sky, were familiar, well-known: the low, spreading branches of the old churchyard yew. Jeanie raised the latch, and pushed, and stepped out on the road for home, the lych gate falling closed behind her.


End file.
